Sustainable intensification of crop-livestock systems to improve food security and farm income diversification in the Ethiopian highlands Project Design Workshop 30 January - 2 February 2012, Addis Ababa Ethiopia
Pop-corn feedback and reflections on the past two days
This workshop provides an opportunity for a broad group of important stakeholders to both learn about the project plans and to share their views on expectations from and opportunities for synergies with the project (days 1 and 2) and for the core project team to finalize the project details (days 3 and 4).
Tomorrow, there will be some more guidance on site selection coming from the Stanley Wood group.
What is missing, which we need to address in the coming two days, on top of what we already have:
More substantial discussion on component integration? How to bring together the components and interventions?
Communication and knowledge management?
Early wins and criteria for this (specific examples would help) - some technology we might want to integrate;
Our next workshop to prepare (Tanzania) and to work further on West Africa - and developing a timeline;
Coordination and project management will also be on the menu.
Pop-corn: forming new groups of 3. My piece of advice for the project design is... What my lasting impression about this project/ the people / this workshop is:
Advices:
As of tomorrow, we need to be clear on our professional disciplines, beyond - how these areas of research contribute to the whole system?
a) Narrow down activities and specify timelines with realistic deadlines b) We have to talk about economic sustainability.
a) We need to focus more / b) What is there about the enabling environment (economic, financial, policy)?
The team is more important than project institutions;
Make the local research departments involved in the design, site selection and implementation;
Go down to sites and things will become clearer;
It's better to focus on short-term learning and local planning (design that way) / Move away from traditional to systemic ways of designing - how can research and development be linked practically;
We have to think outside the box e.g. mechanization / hierarchy of results???
Actively engaging stakeholders / indigenous knowledge is important / FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS
Focus / make use of good activities over the years / respond to national priorities
Important to understand context but also built-in phase-ability - we need to be flexible;
Who owns this project? Get out of our silos and
Lasting impression / take-homes:
Imagine if we had more participants joining this workshop! Lack of coordination.
a) We are happy to see the involvement of local institutions b) Look at livestock intensification, not just crop intensification.
We were impressed by how enthusiastic everyone was;
Collaboration opportunities are great with this project but that's also very challenging;
???
Integration of different disciplines and groups requires a lot of work;
Commitment that integration of ... is excellent;
Who will pick up the results?
???
Everybody in this room has sthg to offer to make this project successful;
Impressed by quick outputs on targeting in little time / impressive that we looked at outcome indicators - they're key to what we're trying to achieve;
N/A
Final closure / Iain: Iain:
We opened this workshop deliberately to gather many ideas etc. Now how do we take these rich discussions to focus on what we're going to do or not and why?
We don't need and can't achieve 100% agreement but we have to achieve alignment. We should be able to live with our decisions;
Suggestions to help:
What scale are we talking about? Farms seem to be good but other issues are higher scale (e.g. watershed) or lower scale (e.g. gender);
How do we balance sustainability and intensification? Productivity focus but also intersecting issues e.g. market context and value chains.
Technology: the project is about application, adoption and combination. Those principles mean that we won't invest in tech development. How do we adapt and combine technologies?
What mechanisms to achieve impact at scale? Is this a pilot project to test new ideas and let them to be adapted by our boundary partners? Is is sthg we want to more firmly embed in development projects and if so how?
We have to be clear about our focus and maintain our flexibility - we need to understand the system we're dealing with. Do we understand how systems are working, farmer priorities? This relates with ownership. We can afford to try and understand these issues in a 5-year time span.
??? (BMGF)
It's been very useful to see how a workshop can be run and that was very interesting;
The Gates Foundation is a very young organisation building upon a long tradition. We want to learn from other projects and be part of the research ecosystem.
Rob:
We wanted with this programme to reach out to various actors.
The pieces of CG centers, if put together, could be extremely attractive. This is where this project sparked off. I want to encourage everyone to think about how to integrate and go beyond 'business as usual'.
About our imperative of impact: We want to encourage reflection about this. We also have a catalytic position and we can demonstrate impact in our target areas but that will hopefully really generate interest from other donors. We want to work with you all on a concept that catches fire.
How imperfect our ability to predict is: the pace of change is accelerating, it's hard to think about our long term future. Our predictive ability gets fuzzy beyond 6-7 years. We have to think outside the box about small-scale mechanization, water management etc. We want to provide an environment for people to be creative, including in the communities where we'll be working.
About being demand-driven: Participation is important but we need to envision sthg that people cannot envision yet. There are investments in research focused on problems and needs but others also focused on opportunities.
The workshop went where it should have, starting broadly with diverse players and perspectives and there was some coming together.
Shirley:
Thank you for those who are going - the wiki and the blog will continue and we will interact further with you.
To those who are staying, this is a great start, let's just continue!
Project Design Workshop
30 January - 2 February 2012, Addis Ababa Ethiopia
Pop-corn feedback and reflections on the past two days
This workshop provides an opportunity for a broad group of important stakeholders to both learn about the project plans and to share their views on expectations from and opportunities for synergies with the project (days 1 and 2) and for the core project team to finalize the project details (days 3 and 4).
Tomorrow, there will be some more guidance on site selection coming from the Stanley Wood group.
What is missing, which we need to address in the coming two days, on top of what we already have:
Pop-corn: forming new groups of 3.
My piece of advice for the project design is...
What my lasting impression about this project/ the people / this workshop is:
Advices:
Lasting impression / take-homes:
Final closure / Iain:
Iain:
- We opened this workshop deliberately to gather many ideas etc. Now how do we take these rich discussions to focus on what we're going to do or not and why?
- We don't need and can't achieve 100% agreement but we have to achieve alignment. We should be able to live with our decisions;
- Suggestions to help:
- What scale are we talking about? Farms seem to be good but other issues are higher scale (e.g. watershed) or lower scale (e.g. gender);
- How do we balance sustainability and intensification? Productivity focus but also intersecting issues e.g. market context and value chains.
- Technology: the project is about application, adoption and combination. Those principles mean that we won't invest in tech development. How do we adapt and combine technologies?
- What mechanisms to achieve impact at scale? Is this a pilot project to test new ideas and let them to be adapted by our boundary partners? Is is sthg we want to more firmly embed in development projects and if so how?
- We have to be clear about our focus and maintain our flexibility - we need to understand the system we're dealing with. Do we understand how systems are working, farmer priorities? This relates with ownership. We can afford to try and understand these issues in a 5-year time span.
??? (BMGF)- It's been very useful to see how a workshop can be run and that was very interesting;
- The Gates Foundation is a very young organisation building upon a long tradition. We want to learn from other projects and be part of the research ecosystem.
Rob:- We wanted with this programme to reach out to various actors.
- The pieces of CG centers, if put together, could be extremely attractive. This is where this project sparked off. I want to encourage everyone to think about how to integrate and go beyond 'business as usual'.
- About our imperative of impact: We want to encourage reflection about this. We also have a catalytic position and we can demonstrate impact in our target areas but that will hopefully really generate interest from other donors. We want to work with you all on a concept that catches fire.
- How imperfect our ability to predict is: the pace of change is accelerating, it's hard to think about our long term future. Our predictive ability gets fuzzy beyond 6-7 years. We have to think outside the box about small-scale mechanization, water management etc. We want to provide an environment for people to be creative, including in the communities where we'll be working.
- About being demand-driven: Participation is important but we need to envision sthg that people cannot envision yet. There are investments in research focused on problems and needs but others also focused on opportunities.
- The workshop went where it should have, starting broadly with diverse players and perspectives and there was some coming together.
Shirley: